Census Bureau Releases 2010 Participation Data
March 29, 2010
The U.S. Census Bureau last week released the first numbers of the nation's decennial Census, but the bureau is not yet counting anything beyond the number of responses it has received.
On March 23, the bureau reported that the nation's Census mail participation rate–the share of households that have mailed back the 2010 Census forms they received–stood at 16 percent, representing about 21 million returned forms. That percentage has since climbed to 34 percent as of today, according to the Bureau, which is now releasing the participation rate on a daily basis.
Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said last week that participation seems to be off to a good start, and noted that some regions are showing much greater participation due to receiving their forms earlier than other areas. For example, some midwestern states are showing high participation rates, but they had their census forms hand delivered earlier than the rest of the country. And Maryland is showing an above average participation rate, most likely due in part to having a census processing center located in the state.
